The article entitled “Investigating Black ASL: A Systematic Review”
by Andrea Toliver-Smith and Betholyn Gentry reviews the literature about linguistic differences exhibited in American Sign Language (ASL). The authors’ systematic review aimed at adequately describing and acknowledging sociological differences or variations in Black ASL. The variations in Black ASL are considered to be influenced by culture and religion. According to the authors, various spoken language features have also influenced sign language. For example, African American English has influenced Black ASL. However, a confounding element of the authors' review is the fact that a significant percentage of the observations relating to Black ASL exist in unpublished works or non-peer-reviewed books.
Toliver-Smith and Gentry conducted the literature review
to examine the existence of Black ASL, as well as record or document various empirical studies on the topic. The articles reviewed by the authors included articles published in scholarly journals between 1970 and 2012, and the resources selected for the review had to include hypotheses, research design descriptions, as well as descriptions of the participants. In total, seven articles met the authors’ inclusion criteria, and all the seven articles discussed the differences between mainstream ASL and Black ASL. Nevertheless, only a few research articles that met the authors’ review criteria were exposed, which shows that empirical research on linguistic variation in ASL is in its infancy, and therefore, there is a need for further exploration of the topic.
The findings of the authors’ systematic review
show that there were only a few studies that acknowledged and sufficiently investigated Black ASL. According to the authors’ findings, the African Americans’ use of ASL in a different way is a broadly accepted concept, but such a phenomenon had not been addressed or documented adequately until recently. However, the authors’ systematic review of the seven articles provided sufficient evidence to prove or support Black ASL’s existence. Besides, the articles reviewed by the authors addressed the linguistic differences between ASL and Black ASL. Although the authors’ literature review reveals the existence of linguistic differences between ASL and Black ASL, the review provides an incomplete depiction of such differences since the best method of describing the morphological and phonological characteristics of signed languages has not been agreed upon by researchers.
References
Toliver-Smith, A., " Gentry, B. (2017). Investigating Black ASL: A Systematic Review. American Annals of The Deaf, 161(5), 560-570. doi: https://doi.org/10.1353/aad.2017.0006
